Mother hopes person who found envelope containing $700 returns it

By Keith McCord , Deseret News

Published: Thursday, Oct. 17 2013 6:22 p.m. MDT

Arely Sandoval said she's devastated after losing an envelope containing $700. The single mother of five said the money was to pay her mortgage and utility bills. She asked her 11-year-old son to hold a folder with the envelope in it. When he gave it back to her, the envelope was gone. Here, she looks at the bag of coins her kids gave her to help pay the bills. (Winston Armani, Deseret News)

PAYSON — It may not seem like a lot of money, but for a single mother of five, $700 was all she had.

Now, Arely Sandoval hopes the person who found the cash will return it.

Sandoval lost an envelope full of money she was going to use to pay her monthly bills. She processes Medicaid paperwork for patients at Mountain View Hospital in Payson.

With two boys and three girls, ranging in age from 2 to 12, she admits finances are tight.

With the mortgage and utility bills due, Sandoval went to the credit union a few days ago and withdrew some cash. She had told her kids there wasn't going to be enough money to cover all the bills this month.

Arely Sandoval said she's devastated after losing an envelope containing $700. The single mother of five said the money was to pay her mortgage and utility bills. She asked her 11-year-old son to hold a folder with the envelope in it. When he gave it back to her, the envelope was gone. (Winston Armani, Deseret News)

"When I told them that, before coming in that morning, they broke open their piggy banks and they put all their money in this bag with a bow,” she said breaking down in tears. The coins from those piggy banks totaled $68.

Sandoval put all the money, including the coins, into an envelope, and placed them into a file folder. Wednesday afternoon, before she had a chance to pay the bills, Sandoval took her kids to the hospital to attend a children's function.

As she was getting the young children out of their car seats, she had her oldest child hold on to the folder that contained all the money, plus a few receipts.

Fifteen minutes later, Sandoval took the folder from her son.

"So I opened it, I was like, ‘Where's the envelope?’ And he said, ‘What envelope? And I said, ‘That's the money to pay our bills.’"

They started looking for it. They went back to the parking lot to see if they could find there.

“When we went outside, we saw the receipts on the ground, and that's when I thought, 'Oh, my goodness. Somebody took it,'" she said.